A nanowire is a relatively thin wire, for example, with a diameter or width measured in nanometers (nm). Nanowires can have diameters or widths such as, for example, about 4 nm to 10 nm.
Nanowires can be a viable device option instead of fin field-effect transistors (FinFETs). For example, a nanowire can be used as the fin structure in a dual-gate, tri-gate or gate-all-around (GAA) FET device. Nanowires can have a smaller perimeter than fins, but also larger external resistance due to an under-spacer component.
Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) scaling can be enabled by the use of stacked nanowires, which offer superior electrostatics and higher current density per footprint area than FinFETs. III-V channel materials exhibit high mobility for electrons and germanium (Ge) channel materials exhibit high mobility for holes, which can result in higher performance.